Grim Legion returned to Karazhan last night. What a raid. Warrior and Paladin shared the tanking duties. Four, count them, four Shamans in the raid. Two Restoration, one Enhancement, and one Elemental (yours truly).

I did pretty good. I’ll give some credit where I think it’s due. There’s this cloak enchant that you can get. It reduces your threat by 2% or so. Called Subtlety. 2% doesn’t seem like a lot. I almost didn’t bother with it. But… my damage output has never been higher. Whatever it is, whether it’s just the 2% difference, or I am playing more aware of my threat generation, whatever it is, something’s working. I used to be tied with the Enhacement Shaman in damage output. Before I’d gotten the enchantment on the cloak I trailed most of the DPSers. Sometimes I trailed pretty badly. #5 in a raid of 10 was not where I wanted to me. Oh, I’ve got utility too, like cleansing and healing and buffing and such. Well, last night we didn’t have any Mages, Hunters, Druids, or Rogues along. So somebody had to be up there on the chart. I’m glad it was me. The Enhancement Shaman just behind me.

It wasn’t a perfect run. We did wipe on Netherspite. We got the dragon mispositioned and then lost a tank. We ankh’d back up and got him on the second try. We wiped on some ghosts. There’s a five pull you get on your way to Netherbane (Netherspite I mean). Except all of a sudden there was a sixth. And then a dozen more. That’s been a recent glitch that’s been happening over and over. This crowd of ghosts just happens to stream up as we’re fighting the crowd we expect and it’s a sure wipe. I’ve seen it several times now. Absolutely no way to prevent it if you aren’t expecting it. Few are. But for the entire run, we never once ran back from the cemetery, we never once needed to repair. (We never needed to go back for gear, reagents, or anything. Flawless.) Every boss but one one-shotted, and he was two-shotted.

What did our raid look like? I’ve already mentioned 6 of our 10. Protection Warrior (point tank for single targets) and Paladin (AoE tank for mobs of mobs). Two Restoration Shamans (both heal Heroics), an Enhancement and an Elemental Shaman. We had a mana battery along, our Shadow Priest. We had a Warlock along, obviously useful for the Illhoof fight. We had a Holy Priest, and a slam spec DPS Warrior rounding out the team. It was a fantastic job in that we finished in just over four hours. Despite the little dance with the dragon, and the snafu with the ghosts, I’ve never been on a better run.

Oh, yes. Arcane Resist gear on the Curator fight. We did a little test. Only the Hateful Bolt soaker was wearing it. He kept the #2 spot on the Curator’s aggro table. The rest of us were in our regular gear. That worked pretty well. But it’s imperative that you can burn down those flares quickly. We got it to where we had a little breathing room between them. If you aren’t killing them quickly, Arcane Resist will help you through the longer fight by reducing the healing required.

Gearwise there’s two more things I must get from the badges vendor there in Shattrath. My boots are my last green item (Item Level 115 Landing Boots, quest reward, and they’re VERY good Elemental boots), and my chest armor is my last blue item (the Tidefury Chestpiece). 60 badges for the boots and 75 for the chest, and I’ll be rather well equipped. I’ve also got 49 badges towards that goal.

4 Responses to Full clear, both dragons, one night. Shammys on top. Our raid makeup.

Actually, I think the credit belongs to a group makeup that buffed you quite significantly:

20%x2 nature debuffs almost every 10 seconds
shadow priest – misery (+5%)
shadow priest mana/life regen
ability to use wrath of air (rather than being stuck in a melee group and having to drop wf or goa)
tranquil air totem (20% threat reduction is huge. looks like you went ahead with kings instead of salv. more int -> more crit)

It’s literally just LB spamming or LBx3/CL rotation, not to mention your group had 3 potential bloodlusts unless you rotated one of the resto shamans in the tank group for 2x bloodlusts per group simultaneously. There’s no magic to it. Enfeebled? Keep nuking at 30+yds.

Looks like you might have been threat capped even with subtlety, as your dps is high but overall dmg doesn’t reflect the 30% difference between you and Maderarojo. Salv & tranquil air (44% total threat reduction) might’ve been the ticket to your threat woes. Subtlety is, well, subtle.

Also, not sure if that enhance shaman was giving the tank windfury but it does help with aggro. Bonus points if he can wf/goa totem twist.

I’ve heard of that. You drop one, the effect kicks in, then you drop the other, getting you both effects. How long does that last? And it’s kind of mana intensive, no? Is there a macro that you’d use to get the effect?

I’ve always read you’re supposed to give the warriors in your group Windfury. I haven’t been grouped with a warrior in a while, but from what I see they get buffed with Grace of Air. I seldom, never, got Windfury when I was tanking with my Prot Warrior. I love my wife because she drops it for me when we’re together.

I’ve seen macros for it but when I was enhancement, I did it manually which made for a fun minigame. My rotation usually went:

Open with windfury totem rank 1, proceed to drop the rest (mana spring, strength of earth/stone skin/tremor, searing totem optional). During this time, the tank should be getting some initial aggro. Stormstrike, Grace of Air rank 3 immediately after, and as stormstrike cooldown is about to come up (1-2 seconds before), drop windfury rank 1, stormstrike, grace of air. Repeat.

Windfury totem imbue lasts 9 seconds, and the stormstrike cooldown is 10 seconds. Since you normally imbue your own weapons with windfury weapon (not windfury totem), you can’t see the countdown of when windfury weapon is about to wear off. So I’ve typically used stormstrike’s cooldown as a rough estimator of when to drop windfury. There’s probably a better method but as long as I see WF effects on people near me, while I get +77 agility, I’m content. The rogues, of course, go nuts with both effects.

Yes, it is quite mana intensive, hence having a paladin judging wisdom on a boss, and use of shamanistic rage on cooldown (starting around 50-60% rather than 10-20%) is usually enough to keep going for a boss fight. Also, with the rebuff to water shield now being an automatic free 50mp5, mana issues are much less an issue. The twisting effect marginally reduces the Enhance shaman’s personal dps but the benefits are pretty outrageous when done correctly in a group that can benefit. It does take a fair bit of practice though.

Windfury has a hidden 3 second cooldown, so for a fast dual wield melee class that has tons of haste procs (flurry on fury warriors, blade flurry/slice & dice on rogues, double mongoose, etc), windfury typically adds around 30-40% damage due to basically always hitting that chance proc as the cooldown comes up. Hence, if you got a geared warrior pumping 1000dps sustained, getting 300-400 more dps is more than what a wrath/grace of air would do for anyone else.

In 5 mans, it’s subject mostly to the party makeup and the warrior-tank’s ability to generate threat.

If there’s a druid tank, hunter, enhance shaman, grace of air goes down without question.

It’s when you have something like a prot warrior, 2 hunters, enhance shaman and healer when it becomes a bit more of a potential twisting situation. If the prot warrior is a threat maniac and can hang without windfury, that’s perfect. But seldom is the case and windfury on the openers helps with initial threat by getting rage quicker.

If it’s a prot paladin, aggro shouldn’t be an issue and grace of air goes down.